


Mostly Alright

by Luckybuckyboy (Whowantstoknow259)



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Agent of Shield Bucky, Bucky Barnes Recovering, College Student Steve, Corporate Espionage, Food Snob Bucky, I only intended to 2500 but here we are, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Obnoxious Social Justice Warrior Steve, Playing fast and loose with technology, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, as a plot device, kind of, playing fast and loose with Bruce Banner's backstory, this is actually just 10000 words from the author's cooking blog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-02-01 00:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12693090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whowantstoknow259/pseuds/Luckybuckyboy
Summary: Steve dabbles as a honeypot, there’s some light altruistic corporate espionage, Hydra’s involved somehow, and Bucky would just like for someone to tell him the secret to life.But yeah, things are mostly good. Well, they’re okay. They’re alright. It’s probably fine.





	Mostly Alright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kateyfish (014469)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/014469/gifts).



> I'm [Vilesbian](http://www.vilesbian.tumblr.com)

Things are mostly good.

 

Well things aren’t bad, not exactly.

 

It’s just.

 

It’s hard to explain.

 

Bucky has always known the rules, and tried to live his life by them. Before the war, Azzano and approximately seventy years of bullshit, he was known as a good man.

 

He’d known the rules. He’d known how to dress, he’d known how to talk to other men, how to talk to his elders and his bosses, how to charm girls with being a heel or harming their reputations. 

 

He’d been good at being James Buchanan Barnes, of projecting this image of himself that people liked.

 

He’d been good at not thinking for too long about how some months he and his ma and the girls were real close to being on the streets, how it took effort and control to keep his eyes to himself around other men, how he never seemed to have that problem around the girls he take out. 

 

Then there was the war, he’d been drafted but found himself learning the rules of the army just was quickly as he’d picked up the rules of civilian life. He was good at being a soldier, well liked as an XO by both his men and superiors. 

 

Hell, even as the asset he’d known the rules.

 

But now, now Natalia had saved him and S.H.I.E.L.D. had rehabilitated him and all but given him a shiny plaque stating he was a free person who could do what he wanted and booted him out into a brand new century.

 

And he wasn’t grateful.

 

He enjoyed his freedom.

 

He did.

 

It’s just, well, life is hard as a formerly brainwashed-prisoner-of-war-turned-assassin. He's strange, a man out of time, possibly the only truly unique person on this planet and a bit lonely.

 

Something is missing, he just wished he knew what.

 

-

 

He knew S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted him back for wetwork. He was good at wetwork. But it was part of Bucky’s life goals to never kill someone again outside of self defense or unavoidable firefights or the occasional run-in with Hydra.

 

It was his only stipulation upon joining S.H.I.E.L.D., he owed them a lot so whe would work for them, but not wetwork. Natalia had made a few stipulations on his behalf that he hadn’t thought of about pay scales and benefits and acceptable levels of surveillance.

 

Being a real boy was hard.

 

Still he enjoyed working for S.H.I.E.L.D., he understood the rules, had memorized the employee handbook as well as the policies and procedures manuals for each department that he had clearance for. He’d learned that being taciturn outside of ops, looking generally mean and unflappable, coupled with his reputation as the Winter Soldier, was enough for him to work well with the Strike teams. 

 

He preferred it to being at home. S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided his apartment and it was a secure place for him to sleep but he didn’t know anything about how people decorated their houses now, and the only friends he had were Natalia and Clint, and maybe Sharon although she was more than likely only friendly to him because she was dating Natalia. 

 

So his friends were at work, his apartment was empty and unfamiliar, so generally he preferred work and liked to sign up for the long term ops that would have him away and busy for extend periods of time. 

 

So when Coulson short-listed him for a surveillance op of course Bucky was planning on saying yes. He’d almost backed out when he learned he’d be going undercover, but out a strong desire not to be going back to his apartment that night he’d agreed. 

 

“You’ll be Nathan Roitner, a veteran of Iraq and a former Blackwater personal. You left them because you wanted to stay here in New York. We’ll put Roitner’s information where he’ll be headhunted for a security position for department of defense contracts department with Advanced Industry Mechanics or Aim.”

 

Coulson passed him the folder with his identity and background, Bucky glanced through it, Roitner has several disciplinary notes in his military file, nothing that would get him discharged but enough to paint a picture of a cruel man who enjoyed petty displays of power. Working for Blackwater for five years also said something about the sort of man Bucky would be playing. 

 

“Are you sure they’ll hire me? I wouldn’t hire Roitner to carry a gun and know company secrets, not based on this background.”

 

“We ran an algorithm on all known Aim employees and created that identity to be just their type.”

 

“They like thugs then?”

 

“They like men with who will follow orders, and don’t mind if they have cruel streak.”

 

“Okay well then. What am I looking for?”

 

“First objective is that as soon as you get access to a network connected computer, you need to log into this twitter account, the account has a virus that will download as soon as you log in. That should give us access to their systems. From you we will need security logs about who is coming and going to their top clearance labs and we need project lists.”

 

“Twitter? Roitner doesn’t seem the type.”

 

“It’s innocuous, social media is the type of thing that might get you written up but nothing that their Cyber security department would look too hard at because everyone is addicted to their twitter. That being said, if you get the chance to do it under someone else’s login take the shot.”

 

“What is that we think they’re doing?”

 

Coulson frowned and shuffled his papers, Bucky had come to understand that he did that not out of genuine nerves but as a way to warn Bucky to brace himself for whatever Coulson was going to say.

 

“We think they’re selling secrets to Hydra.” 

 

Bucky forced his heartbeat to stay steady, forced his muscles not to seize up, to keep breathing in and out. 

 

He had killed every Hydra agent who had ever worked on him or had seen his face. He and Natalia had gone on a small rampage, slaughtering everyone who had dared to turn them into weapons. So he wasn’t worried about being recognized or retaken. 

 

It’s just Hydra would always be pant-shittingly terrifying to him. 

 

Which is why it always made his missions against them the sweetest to complete.

 

Coulson puts up two suspected Hydra operatives seen coming and going from A.I.M. headquarters. 

 

“We’re looking for proof that Aim is taking projects that were developed with Department of Defense money and selling them to known terrorist organizations. All of your information is in the packet, and Agent Barnes?” Coulson paused and made eye contact with Bucky, “I want you to know you were my first choice for this mission.”

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. had been mostly tolerant of Bucky being rehabilitated and reformed, but there were a few that still saw Bucky as Hydra. So the trust of the team Bucky worked with meant a lot.

 

After the briefing he found out he had to back to his apartment anyways because the op is in Manhattan and so he didn’t have to leave for his fake address until the morning. The vetting and interview process would take about two weeks but Bucky could spend his time getting into character. 

 

Even if he had to go back to his apartment, he infinitely preferred to go back and working then to be sitting there unsure about what he was supposed to be doing with his time.

 

-

 

The S.H.I.E.L.D. analysts were right, Roitner was asked to submit a resume after a week and then was called for an interview only two days after the resume was submitted. Bucky put on one of the expensive but not too expensive suits that he had in his closet and went in for the interview. 

 

He’d spent the last few days memorizing the packet on his background and also could draw from the fact that he technically worked for a paramilitary organization, just not the one they thought. Still he played Roitner as mean and more dumb than cunning but good at following orders. Not someone who would think for himself no matter what the orders were. 

 

He was just who A.I.M. was looking for.

 

They hired him on the spot. The interview board told him that they would wait until his background check and vetting came through and then he could come in for training. 

 

Bucky left the building with a spring in his step, like a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted, and noticed immediately the dark skinned man who took up following him. 

 

He was briefly conflicted on whether or not Roitner would notice but decided that he would and wouldn’t. Roitner would pick up on being followed but would be unable to spot the follower.

 

He hunched his shoulders and gave Roitner a few paranoid ticks and glances while he walked to the parking garage with his car. 

 

The man following him probably got the license plate off his Black SUV, but he wasn’t worried, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s identities were airtight.

 

He didn’t think that the man had been A.I.M. but he could be wrong. It just didn’t seem like their style, if they were hiring ex-Blackwater security then they would be able to afford someone with a bit more skills as a tail. 

 

The next few days, he went about his business. Roitner might be a dick but he picked up a few of Bucky’s more innocuous habits, mainly because they were things he couldn’t be tracked through but still things Bucky enjoyed. 

 

Like cooking.

 

Bucky would be damned if he ate ramen and hot pockets for the duration of this op. He’d experienced seventy years of torture and intravenous feeding so he was going to cook good food and punch anyone in the throat if they suggested he do otherwise.

 

Currently he was shaping a meatloaf, but unlike his childhood where the loaf was more bread and fat then protein, his was lean ground turkey, the kind hand prepared at an actual butcher shop. Instead of bread, his binding was bell peppers, sweet peppers, tomatoes, and soft caramelized carrots and onions, all cooked until soft in seasoned turkey broth and then run through the blender and drained, he mixed in two eggs and the meat with some seasonings and put it in the oven. It was a big tray but he was a big guy and food really did give him so much joy. 

 

He’d made some peanut butter banana bread the other day and while the pairing was odd, it made a hearty meal when he added garlic butter cooked spinach.

 

Food honestly was his favorite thing about the future. He never had to worry about where it was coming from and the sheer amount available to him allowed him to make whatever his imagination could come up with. He likes to change recipes, adding or subtracting things to see how they taste. 

 

He ate the entire 9x12 pan of meatloaf, which felt like more of an indulgence than it actually was (with the serum he always needed the calories), and spent the evening reflecting on how much he enjoyed feeling full. 

 

-

 

Bucky’s stalker from the other day had clearly run his plates and was now (badly) following Bucky around his neighborhood as Roitner went out and about on errands. Currently Bucky was grocery shopping.

 

He enjoyed grocery shopping a lot, it was his favorite type of errand, finding new and strange things that he’d never tried before. He liked the fresh vegetables available to him the wide variety of cuts of meats, also there were meats salted and preserved in new and interesting ways and endless varieties of cheeses, not to mention the ingredients for breads and pastas. He also liked to get inspiration from the freezer aisle. Find something that looks good and then find the ingredients to make it fresh. He was thinking about making chicken bacon rolls but instead of bacon he was gonna use prosciutto and was already thinking of what cheeses to put in his cheese sauce and what veggies to add. But it was hard to really sink into it the peace that cooking gave him because he was being followed.

 

Grocery shopping was the highlight of his day, his week even, all the new options. His S.H.I.E.L.D. therapist has said it might be paralyzing but the grocery store was the one place where there was no wrong decision. If he got chard and it ends up not going well cooked down in his homemade spicy gouda sauce or if putting peaches, apples, and bell peppers together for a glaze he was gonna douse his pork chops and broccoli in made it tastes bad, well first of all he was the only one eating it and second of all he’d still finish it because not matter what it tasted like he’d eaten worse. 

 

It’s not like other things, like if the clothing he buys made him stand out, or if the books he read will contain trigger words, if the shows he watched are gonna set him off, or the websites he visited were going to flag him in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s systems. What if he talked to his neighbors and was memorable enough that one of his many enemies tracked him down, or what if by being a strange loner made him memorable enough to track him down. What if the conversation he had with a stranger, or the movie in the background of the department store, or the song playing in the bodega has a trigger or set him off and he killed everyone in there.

 

Just cause he hadn’t mass murdered anyone, didn’t mean he wasn’t concerned that the potential was there. 

 

Food was never a trigger and food had no negative consequences more severe than heartburn. Which he rarely got no matter what strange combinations he ate.

 

So all things considered Bucky was a bit irritated that he was being followed while at the grocery store of all place.

 

Bucky stealthily snapped a picture of the tail and sent it to Sky, the S.H.I.E.L.D. analyst on his mission support team. 

 

By the time he got back to his mission apartment, and had put his groceries away, there’s a dossier in his email about Sam Wilson.

 

Ex-vet, currently worked at a VA in Brooklyn as a group leader. His connection to A.I.M. was that three members of his group were vets who were also ex-A.I.M. employees, and one who was a current low level doorman to the James Watt building where A.I.M. had their headquarters. Sam’s internet search history had a lot of research on A.I.M. scandals and he’d been exchanging anonymous emails with the doorman from his group (nothing is truly anonymous to S.H.I.E.L.D.) which is where Sam had been given Roitner’s name and interview time. Sam had also been exchanging messages with a burner phone registered to a Diya Pigg. The messages went through hypothetical plans to prove that A.I.M. was doing something illegal, but never spelling out directly what Sam suspected A.I.M. of doing..

 

It was all hypothetical until Sam passed along Roitner’s name. The plans solidified when Sam passed along Roitner’s name, the burner looking for an opportunity to infiltrate Roitner’s life, although they don’t say to what end. 

 

If Bucky had to guess it would be to use Roitner to gain access to the A.I.M. building. That’s what he’d do, and he can’t rely on them to act like a trained operative, not when they could be anyone.

 

Sky’s conclusion based on the evidence is that Sam was getting information about something shady going down at A.I.M., something concerning enough that he was working the burner looking for evidence, but if he or the eloquently named owner of the burner phone are working for someone there are no references. There’s no one in Sam’s life with current ties to spy agencies or paramilitary organizations. There were a number of cops just because the high number of vets going into law enforcement, but none of them seem like they’re running an investigation.

 

Bucky asked for Sky to send him all communications from Sam to the burner phone or the doorman and all communications made to and from the burner phone. 

 

He set about making some butter flake crust but with cream cheese added to the dough, it would make the batter thicker and the crust dryer but also rich with a good flavor for his chicken, prosciutto, chard, and tomato rolls. The dryness could be countered with a cream based sauce for his roll stuffings, that and the tomato should more than make up for the dry bread.

 

While he cooked the chard down in a simple cream sauce with some cheese, shallots, two bay leaves, coriander seeds, and one small jalapeno with most of the seeds removed so it wouldn’t be too spicy, he considered what to do about Sam. 

 

His instincts were to draw the unknown party with the phone out so he could know who and what he was up against. The best way to do that would be to give them an opportunity to infiltrate his life.

 

When the chard was almost done he added the tomatoes and let the the whole thing simmer. When the chicken was done he added it to the sauce with the prosciutto and then let it simmer and reduce while the rolls finished baking. 

 

He sent in a request to check in with Coulson.

 

Then he pulled out the rolls and cut out the middle before ladling in the thick sauce. 

 

He couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t bought the freezer rolls, but he was willing to bet his version tasted better.

 

-

 

Coulson sent Bucky an address disguised as an old special forces buddy looking to meet up. When Bucky arrived at the mission control brownstone, Natalia was lounging in an over stuffed chair throwing popcorn at Coulson while Sky was clearly trying not to laugh.

 

“Yasha’s here, now it’s a party.” Natalia said right as Coulson caught the latest piece of popcorn and ate it. 

 

“I’ve asked you to call me Bucky.” He mumbled.

“You’re my best friend  _ James _ , but as long as you insist on calling me  _ Natalia _ I will not call you the name for a pet dog.”

 

“Natalia is a nice name.  _ That _ name was terrible in the forties and it’s terrible now. Bucky is an improvement.” 

 

“Woof woof.” Natalia sneered good naturedly.

 

“If you’re done Agents,” Coulson said, in his blandest tone of voice, “Samuel Wilson and the unknown with the burner phone want to plant someone in Nathan Roitner’s life.”

 

“From what I’ve gathered, Sam has reason to believe that Aim is up to something really bad, we’re not sure what exactly he has or where he got his information but he had this information before he reached out to his group members with Aim connections.” Sky pulled up dossiers on Wilson and the four vets projecting them onto the wall, the future was so cool.

 

“Do we think he got it from the unknown?”

 

“Maybe. From what I got from his communications, whatever he has, he had before he reached out to his group members, but his conversations with the burner seems like it picked up mid-conversation.” Sky displayed the relevant text messages on the wall, “There are five calls between Sam and the burner before the texts start. The burner made first contact.”

 

“So we think he got the information from the burner?” Natalia asked.

 

Sky shrugged, “Ultimately we can’t know for sure but we can’t find anyone in Wilson’s life who would be able to give him information like this. It’s smart that they don’t have anything electronically written down, if we knew what they had it might tell us who they are.”

 

Coulson nodded.

 

“So they want to infiltrate Roitner’s life,” he turned to Bucky, “how do you feel about that?”

 

“It’s the easiest way to draw out the unknown burner,” Bucky shrugged, “but I’m concerned about it compromising the op. How closely do you think Aim watches its new hires?”

 

“I think that if the person raises red flags for us, then it’ll will raise red flags with them, but if it’s someone like Sam, we wouldn’t even know what to look for until he started following you.” Coulson said.

 

“So James doesn’t have to have extended contact.” Natalia spoke up, “We draw them out long enough to know who they are, if we get red flags then James doesn’t continue contact, but if the burner doesn’t raise flags then we allow them to complete their plan to see exactly what they know.” 

 

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just bring them in after they make contact?” Sky asked.

 

“True,” Coulson said, “but if people around Roitner start getting picked up by Shield or even by our contacts in the N.Y.P.D., Aim will start to be suspicious. If there are red flags we will have to risk it, but to pick someone up just for talking to Roitner, that’s a flag in and of itself.”

 

“I don’t mind drawing them out, if it’s no danger to the op.” Bucky tried to look cocky, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

 

-

 

They hashed out a plan that had Bucky stopping at a bar near his mission apartment, every night for a couple of drinks.

 

People typically did not approach him. Bucky was a handsome man, he was not in the habit of lying to himself so even though he felt like a burned out husk of a human being, he knew physically he was good looking and a certain type of thrill seeker’s type. But Bucky normally broadcasted don’t-fuck-with-me vibes and amped that up even more as Roitner.

 

Natalia came each evening as his backup, claiming an inconspicuous corner and wearing a frumpy disguise that does an amazing job of disguising her good looks.

 

Buck was there, he was following his typical routine of ordering three drinks and nursing them while looking like he didn't want to talk.

 

He didn't want to draw out some random.

 

He was on his second beer when a blonde in a slinky red dress came into the bar. 

 

She made a big show of looking around the room and then landed on Bucky, she gave him a seductive smile and crossed the room to sit next to him.

 

Bucky was gonna be nice, and friendly, but he had made a personal vow to not hurt himself any more. No more wetwork, no more sleeping with women.

 

“You wanna hear a ridiculous pick up line?” The blonde asked giving Bucky a hot glance over. 

 

“Sure,” Bucky tried not to sound like it was being tugged out through clenched teeth.

 

“Is your name Jean Claude Van-Damme? Cause you’re Jean Claude Van-Damme sexy.” the Blonde said with a smirk.

 

“Jesus,” Bucky huffed, “lady you weren’t lying.”

 

“I got another, a re you Australian? Because you meet all of my koala-fications.” She grinned, “I’m Alice.”

 

Bucky couldn’t help but chuckle at that, he was sucker for puns.

 

“Nathan. You know Alice, girl like you? I’m surprised you feel the need to work so hard, not when you’re dress is working so well for you.”

 

It just slipped out of his mouth, like the ghost of a younger more charming Bucky.

 

Alice looked flustered, He did not think that was part of the act, or that she was enthusiastic as she was pretending to be. Her grins were a little too wide and smirks a bit wobbly. 

 

“Buy me a drink?”

 

“Sure whatever you want, but I’ll be honest with you, if you’re looking for something more than a drinking buddy you’re barking up the wrong tree my friend.”

 

Alice looked both relieved and desperate.

 

“I am? T-that’s disappointing.”

 

“Nothing personal, but a woman’s charms are lost on me, even a beautiful gal such as yourself.”

 

Charming women, even insincerely seemed to bring out the old Bucky Barnes in him. His memories of that guy were nebulous and incomplete. But apparently chatting up girls in bars brought out the lines.

 

“Oh! Oh? You’re gay.  _ You’re _ gay?”

 

Bucky smirked.

 

Alice began to surreptitiously tap at her phone, her eyes again a little too wide and frantic.

 

Bucky could feel Natalia’s irritation from across the room. She’d been of the opinion that if the burner was going to try and honeypot him, he should play along. Faking a relationship did not mean sex, there were a million and one excuses to not have it and no doubt the honey would go along with it because that’s what they do, give the mark what they want until they get what they want.

 

“This must be fate I think,” Alice said, looking up from her phone, “my best friend was gonna come and be my wingman but I’m gonna be his instead. Wait right here.”

 

She hopped off her barstool and went the bar entrance, to gather her ‘friend’. Natalia took that opportunity to come up and order another drink.

 

“Goddamnit  _ Nathan _ .”

 

“Don’t goddamnit me just yet, I think they have a backup honey.”

 

“You guys talked for five seconds, you told her you were gay and she went ‘please sleep with my friend?’” 

 

“All I’m gonna say is that Alice and her friend are lucky Roitner is me, because any semi-professional with Roitner’s security clearance would have made them by now.”

 

“Well I’ve got Alice, and once I clock her friend we can get out of here.”

 

She ducked back to her corner when the bartender came with her drink. After a few minutes Alice returned with another blond in tow. 

 

“Nathan, haaave you met Grant?” She said, her tone of voice indicating it was some sort of joke, before pushing Grant at Bucky and then walking away with an obnoxious wink over her shoulder.

 

Grant was tall and build in a compact way, broad shoulders that were almost as wide as Bucky’s and a narrow trim waist that made Bucky think about how his hands would look around it. He was was classically handsome, blue eyes, his blond hair was worn long on top and tucked back to one side. 

 

He had a strong jaw that was clenched like he was preparing for a fight, his eyes narrowed, looking suspicious, angry, and mistrustful. 

 

God, Bucky was screwed.

 

Grant stood there, stiff and awkward for a few seconds, until he gathered himself like he was bracing for an attack and sat down next to Bucky with an uncomfortable smile, calling the bartender over to order a drink.

 

They sat there for a minute quietly until Bucky felt the urge to break the silence.

 

“Apples are mutations of Roses.”

 

“What.” Grant blinked at Bucky, confusion breaking through the suspicion.

 

“I watched this documentary about it the other night.”

 

“A documentary about Apples?” Grant still looked confused.

 

“It was a documentary Roses, I’m thinking of starting a garden and so I’ve been watching documentaries about growing things.”

 

“Sure,” Grant said slowly.

 

“I’d like it to be a kitchen garden but if I have the space flowers couldn’t hurt. Maybe an herb garden that could be a bit of both or some flowers that replace soil nutrients. I’m still considering it.”

 

Grant seemed to be intrigued despite himself.

 

“Have you heard about homesteading?” He asked Bucky.

 

“No, what is that?”

 

“It’s nutritional self-sufficiency. A person, or a group of people, produces all their own food by gardening and raising livestock.” 

 

The thing that got Bucky, that really cracked him up is when he found out people were doing things for the aesthetic or hipster morality that his family and neighbors used to do for necessity back in the day. 

 

Things that people  _ still _ did for necessity because even in this glutted future there was still a legion of poor that were, if nothing else, just better hidden than they used to be. 

 

“Hmm,” He said, because although homesteading sounded ridiculous to him, he was weak willed enough not to want to start a fight with someone so attractive.

 

“Yeah, you should look into it, there’s a lot of reasons why it’s a good idea, but most people do it for environmental reasons or to get away from unethical farming practices.”

 

“Environmental reasons?” Bucky asked, mostly because Grant had grimaced as he said it.

 

“Sure, mass farming is really bad for the environment, it introduces invasive species, kills off natural habitats, and can strip local diets of key nutrients. Not to mention the cost of transporting the crops from wherever they’re grown to supermarkets around the country.” Grant was perking up, warming himself to a passionate rant on the evils of the modern farm industry, and Bucky was completely charmed, “I mean I’m of the mindset that personal action is meaningless in the face of corporate inaction, we can stop buying from them all we like but until corporations do their part in environmental clean up it will mean nothing, I’m just personally am against buy products produced by slave labor if I can help it.”

 

The speech could have come across as self righteous very easily, but there was something very earnest about Grant, like he genuinely believed what he was saying and not just as a lifestyle prop to make himself seem ethically superior. 

 

“Slave labor?” Bucky prompted, wanting to hear more, because it was interesting but also because he liked the way the blond’s eyes lit up passionately when he talked.

 

“A lot of produce comes from corporate prison farms, where prisoners labor for pennies a day. And then what isn’t is often produced with migrant farm laborers who are treated a whole lot better.”

 

“I’ve never heard about this, it has never occurred to me about where my food comes from outside of finding the best produces.” Bucky admitted.

 

The truth was that he been a bit dazed by all the options available to him and the fact that he finally had the money to afford it. Sometimes he’d go into a grocery store and enter a pork belly induced frenzy and come home with ten pounds of rich fatty meat, or something similar. He’d feel depressed when he got it home, remember back when he was younger and would have liked nothing more than to stuff his sisters, Becca and Abbey, full of expensive and flavorful food. 

 

But knowing where his food came from seemed more important now that Grant was pointing it out. Bucky had always been a supporter of the labor unions and to think that he was selling out workers did not sit well with him.

 

“Well I can’t imagine  _ you _ put much research into ethical practices.” Grant said snidely and then looked like he instantly regretted it.

 

For a second Bucky was stung, he’d be getting over seventy years of brainwashing and getting used to living in the future, he was doing his best. But then he remembered that Grant was talking to Nathan Roitner. 

 

He really had no place judging Alice and Grant’s undercover skills because his own were...not great… if he was getting this distracted by his mark. 

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bucky asked, he put just enough offense and surprise in his voice, like he had no idea what Grant was referring to. 

 

“Sorry,” Grant winced, “I didn’t mean to um, I meant it as a joke.” 

 

“Huh,” Bucky said, coming to the conclusion that it was time for this to end, Natalia had not doubt gotten all she needed from Grant and so it was time for his exit. 

 

He felt like if he really got Grant talking, he might like him a bit too much, and that was a complication that Bucky as Roitner did not currently need.

 

He gestured to the bartender that he’d like to settle his tab and when the bartender came over Bucky told him that he’d like to pay for Grant’s drink as well. 

 

Grant looked both relieved and conflicted, he told Bucky that he should stay a bit longer but Bucky just smiled at him. 

 

“I’ve got to go, I’m starting my new job in the morning.” 

 

He tried to keep a knowing and mocking edge out of his smile. 

 

He really wished he met Grant under different circumstances. The man was really handsome and passionate and a bit of an asshole. Bucky really liked that in a man. 

 

When he was in high school he had really carried a torch for one of his friends, a kid named Arnie, Arnie had a smart mouth that never knew when to shut up and for a long time Bucky had fancied himself in love with him. But eventually he came to terms with the fact that he had his Mam and the girls to look out for and not matter how much he loved anyone it just wasn’t an option for him. 

 

His Ma needed a good son who could get a good job and the girls needed someone to look out for them. So he’d put those feelings aside and kept them locked down. 

 

But he had always liked men who had a little bit of mouthy asshole in them. 

 

Later on he met up with Natalia to review the files on the honeypots. 

 

Sharon Martinelli and Steven Rogers, no Steven  _ Grant _ Rogers. Those fucking amateurs, he thought fondly.

 

Steve actually had a connection to Sam, they were facebook friends. Steve hadn’t pinged in any searches of Sam’s friend group because he was an art student at CUNY Brooklyn. Big into environmentalism and social justice, worked part time at a homeless shelter. He didn’t profile as someone who would take action offline, Skye explained.

 

Maybe on paper, Bucky thought, but he dared anyone to stand in front of Steven Rogers and think that the man wouldn’t follow through. 

 

Natalia took one look at Bucky looking at Steven’s profile picture and laughed.

 

“You’ve told me you were a real lady charmer back in the day James, but now I’m not sure if I believe that.”

 

Bucky rolled his eyes.

 

“Did you see his face when Alice, or Sharon whoever, dragged him in? If I had tried to put moves on him, he would probably have slugged me. I had to be genuine.”

 

“Oh you  _ had  _ to did you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“For the mission, you had to seduce him with your weird depression-era obsession with food.”

 

“It’s more being fed nutritional fluid through a tube for seventy years than the thirties.”

 

Natalia laughed but Skye looked uncomfortable. When he was primarily hanging out with Natalia and Clint Bucky forgot how frank acknowledgement of his extensive experience with torture and finding humor in it made people uncomfortable.

 

“Because that’s what you take away from the sentence.”

 

“Seventy years of being fed nutritional fluid through tube Natalia, if I want to take the time to talk to a hot guy, I’m gonna.”

 

“This is the last time I recommend you for undercover.”

 

“Good.”

 

They grinned at each other and continued to dig through Sharon and Steven’s lives. 

 

Skye was frowning at her screen.

 

“So Sharon Martinelli is definitely a real person but someone has gone through her personal information with the digital equivalent of a sharpie.” She projected the information onto the screen, “See we have birthday, hospital records, adoption records, immunization records, school records, but the names on her birth certificate are obviously poorly constructed fake identities, there is no record aside from the adoption record for either of her adoptive parent, like literally that is the only thing that is there under either name. We have no home addresses or photos of family online, barely any of Sharon and the records we do have were absurdly hard to get. I mean two hundred and fifty six bit AES encryption for your average private school? Tell me they aren’t hiding something.”

 

“Is it a real school?” Natalia asked.

 

“Yep. Nothing abnormal aside from their cyber security.”

 

“Okay but why not give her a fake identity, you said she’s provable but everyone around is fake so why not just give her a  fake identity too. Seems like a lot of effort for someone who’s not even bothering to hide. I mean you don’t go through this much effort and then let your asset plaster her face all over facebook.” Bucky said. 

 

“Maybe she’s not the asset.” Natalia pointed out, pulling the four parent identities to the front of the projection screen, “Maybe Sharon is exactly who she appears to be, and it’s her parents that are the ones that are hidden. If I wanted to hide something that no one was looking for, I wouldn’t want to use too much security because that just alerts someone that there’s something here to find.”

 

“So Sharon’s parents are possibly spies, what about Steven?” Bucky asked.

 

“No his dad is dead and his mom’s a nurse.” Skye answered.

 

“No how is he involved in this? Sharon has inconsistencies in her identity, she is someone worth looking into. How did Steven Rogers your average university art student get involved in an attempt at corporate espionage for Hammertech?” 

 

“That,” Natalia said, “is a very good question.”

 

-

 

The security job was not great. The corporate culture was one of aggressive competitiveness.

 

Roitner’s supervisor was a man named Rumlow, he was hard and Bucky could sense a mean streak in him that made interactions with him make his skin crawl. He had to gain his trust, to fit in with the A.I.M. staff and that required acting like Roitner, mostly it involved laughing at cruel jokes and saying degrading things. The entire security team was men and all the security for the Department of Defense labs were white, which meant the jokes were ones that were cruel and cutting to women and minorities. 

 

It reminded Bucky of when he was in basic training back in the forties. Hearing hateful things spew from people’s mouths and being forced to swallow his tongue because it wasn’t an option to pistol whip his commanding officer or too afraid that if he defended the queers that his squad mates would start to notice when Bucky couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering and lingering after a couple drinks. 

 

As much as he’d like to pistol whip Rumlow, and boy would he ever, he had to gain a least a small amount of his trust to be able to get the proof of Hydra’s activities. Rumlow had tried to push Bucky around in a display of macho bullshit, and Bucky had played it off like Roitner, letting Rumlow win just enough that Rumlow wouldn’t feel threatened but not so much that he’d think could easily push Roitner around. 

 

A lot of the building of rapport though was just mirroring Rumlow’s body language and speech patterns and laughing at his cruel jokes. Making him trust Roitner, building on Rumlow’s knowledge of their similar backgrounds to think that they were the same type of men.

 

The job itself was shadowing for a month and he’d be alternating time between the cameras for the twelfth floor Labs 12-A through F and their corresponding hallway. His first week he was shadowing the front desk security, a boring job but one that allowed him to film every face that came up to the D.O.D. labs. 

 

He’d managed to log into the social media account under a receptionist’s log in credentials which had given Skye a door into the A.I.M. intranet. She was currently data mining and then running the date through a program to look for anything incriminating.

 

So far nothing had popped up beyond what S.H.I.E.L.D. already knew but there was bound to be something on the A.I.M. intranet server and once Bucky had access to the cameras he could began to make a timeline for who visited what labs and give them a clue as to what A.I.M. was selling Hydra. 

 

As long as he didn’t punch Rumlow in the face. 

 

At the end of the week Bucky was emotionally exhausted and feeling a bit slimy, he dropped his gathered info in the deaddrop in his building, now that he’d actually started the job there’d be no more leeway for meeting up with his team until the op was over.

 

He walked to the grocery store and immediately noticed his tail was back. He wasn’t surprised, according to the communications that Skye had been monitoring Steven or ‘Grant’ was going to try to honeypot him again.

 

Their goal was apparently his security badge and keys. Both of which were locked in the biometric safe in his cover’s apartment. 

 

While shopping he bought ingredients for a dark beer sauce to go with the slightly lumpy chocolate torte that he had made the other day after a particularly stressful day at A.I.M.. He’d actually made three of the flourless tortes but he’d eaten one and a half of the them that night, straight out of the oven instead of a normal dinner. He wanted to make a dark beer sauce to go with the leftovers, maybe even add a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream. 

 

He was not surprised when he rounded the corner and saw Steven there, pretending to be very interested in the varieties of breakfast granola. Bucky had stopped buying store mixed granola and  been making his own and baking it into breakfast bars after reading about it on a recipe blog. His favorite so far had been one with brown butter, pumpkin seeds, dried cherries, and bitter cacao nibs mixed in with the rolled oats and spelt. 

 

“Grant?” He said, because why draw it out, he knew Steven wanted him to react this way so he might as well.

 

Steven turned and then smiled a fake looking smile and said “Nathan? From the other night right?”

 

“Yea,” Bucky replied, “I thought that was you. Do you live around here?”

 

The question was a little mean spirited but, well maybe if Steven was at a loss then it would teach him to be prepared, if he ever tried this again.

 

“Oh, um, no my friend Alice does, and I was visiting her earlier.” Steven paused and then continued when Bucky didn’t say anything, “I was actually gonna stop by that bar and see if I’d run into you again, I didn’t get your number last time.”

 

Buck raised his eyebrows.

 

“I didn’t get the impression that you wanted it, if I’m being honest.”

 

“I did!” Steven said like he was trying to start a fight.

 

God, every time that Steven did something feisty Bucky was so charmed. Hell, he was charmed by the idea of Steven wanting to go head to head with an evil corporation, all by himself. Bucky was will to bet that the main reason Steven was so built was solely so that when he picked a fight with someone bigger and meaner than him, he’d actually stand a chance.

 

“Well you can have if you want,” Bucky said with a small grin, “but do you also want to have dinner with me tonight? I’m making homemade macaroni and cheese.”

 

“I’d love to but I can’t eat gluten.”

 

“No worries, they have gluten free noodles, they have a whole section of gluten free stuff. I normally make my own noodles but I can buy some gluten free ones while we’re here.” 

 

Steven looked surprised but nodded and agreed to finish shopping with Bucky. Bucky kindly did not point out the Steven did not buy anything from the store.

 

In addition to the noodles Bucky found some oat flour that didn’t have gluten and some dark beer made out of lentils and chestnuts. 

 

Steven helped carry a couple of the reusable grocery bags but he seemed impressed when Bucky carried most of them and Bucky liked the way his eyes lingered on the way that Bucky’s muscles bulged as he carried four reusable grocery bags in each hand without breaking sweat. 

 

He let Steven into the apartment and then set about putting away the groceries and putting the ingredients he needed onto the counter. 

 

“Are you allergic to anything here or just hate it?” Bucky asked gesturing to the ingredients on the counter and Steven shook his head no.

 

Steven was watching him like Bucky was some sort of enigma that he couldn’t figure out. 

 

“Can I do anything to help?” He asked Bucky.

 

“Sure, over there I have a standing grater if you want to grate two cup of each of these cheeses. Also help yourself to whatever you want to drink from the fridge.” Bucky pulled out a bowl, a measuring cup, and three rounds of cheese, one of cheddar, one of smoked gouda, and one of gruyere.

 

While Steven did that Bucky quickly and finely chopped some bell peppers, some mild sweet chilis, broccoli, and an onion, and set them sauteing in a pan with some broth and seasonings. He didn’t cook anything without adding vegetables, especially his favorites which where any kind of peppers. He set the noodles on to boil and then put together beer sauce to simmer and reduce on the back burner while he measured out the rest of the ingredients. The broth had reduced enough on his vegetables so he added the milk and then stirred in the oat flour and cheese and set it low to thicken. Then he added the brown sugar and butter to the beer, before taking off the noodles and straining them and setting them to the side. His cheese sauce was ready so he poured the mixture into the pot with the noodles and mixed them together before putting them into a baking dish and spreading the remaining cheese over the top and popping it into the oven. to crisp up. He added the rest of the ingredients to the beer sauce and placed a thermometer in the mixture, set to alert him when it was hot enough.

 

He stepped back and was almost surprised to see Steven sitting on the counter on the other side of the kitchen looking impressed. He had gotten so into the zone of cooking that he’d all but forgotten the other man.

 

“You can cook.” Steven said inanely.

 

“I like cooking.” Bucky said.

 

“It’s just, you don’t seem like the type of man who’d be into cooking.” 

 

“I don’t?”

 

“No you seem like you’d be the masc for masc macho type.”

 

“I have to be very macho at work, but at home I just like to be comfortable.” 

 

The thermometer beeped and Bucky took the beer sauce off of the oven before it could turn too thick, he only wanted the caramelized tasted, not actual caramel. He mixed in whipping cream and scraped in some vanilla bean, before stirring it and pouring into a pyrex container.

 

The macaroni and cheese was done and so he pulled it out and let Steven get some before dishing himself a very large portion. It would tide he over and he’d eat the rest of the dish when Steven was gone. They settled down to eat at Bucky’s coffee table.

 

The noodles were chewier than his own homemade ones but had an interesting grainy flavor. 

 

Steve gave a groan as he took his first bite.

 

“This is so good, what the fuck.” 

 

“I like good food.” Bucky said with a grin. 

 

They ate in silence for a couple minutes before Steven started.

 

“Oh! I just remembered, I brought some information on sustainable food sourcing just in case I ran into you. You seemed interested in it last time we talked.”

 

Steven reached into his backpack and pulled out a packet of papers. Bucky took them feeling touched that he’d gone through the trouble.

 

“Thanks, I am.”

 

They began to talk about food sources, Steven’s information really opening Bucky’s eyes about the state of agriculture and the meat industry in the modern world. Steven got so worked up about it, but he was so smart and passionate that before Bucky knew it, two hours had passed.

 

“Do you want some chocolate torte? That’s what I made the beer sauce for, it’s got no flour in it so you don’t have to worry about gluten.”

 

Steven blinked at the sudden switch from why corporate farms were a form of imperialism to chocolate tortes.

 

“Um, sure.” His cheeks went oddly pink and he followed Bucky into the kitchen moving stiffly. 

 

Bucky pulled out the torte that had not been cut into and sliced out two pieces and then drizzled the beer sauce over the slices. He handed one to Steven and then offered to top off his drink, sparkling water, before leading him back into the living room.

 

Steven seemed to have lost the comfortable relaxation that their two hour long conversation on the evils of the world seemed to give him. He perched on the edge of his seat and ate his torte. He looked like he was enjoying but would have enjoyed it more if he wasn’t so tense. 

 

“I never asked what you did for a living.” Steven said, looking like he was suddenly desperate to keep Bucky talking.

 

“Didn’t you?” Bucky asked, “I’m a security guard at a biotech company.”

 

“You mentioned last time that you were starting a new job, was that it? What did you do before?”

 

Bucky hesitated, he did not want to give information that contradicted his cover, but also he now knew enough about Steven that he knew that telling Steven that he’d worked for Blackwater would go over like a lead balloon.

 

“I worked overseas and before that I was in the military.” He said, hoping that Steven would latch onto the military.

 

Steven’s face darkened and he set his plate down and straightened his spine.

 

“I’m not having sex with you.” He told Bucky, seeming to brace like it was going to be fight.

 

“Um cool. I’m not really comfortable with the idea of us having sex either.”

 

If he did have sex with Steve would not have looking like he did now the whole night and he’d know to call him Bucky. 

 

“Can I still get your phone number?” Steve asked.

 

Bucky gave him the phone number to Roitner’s cell and then Steve gathered his backpack and left, declining Bucky’s offer to call him a lyft with a prim line about how the sharing economy is destroying unions and oppressing the workers. Leaving Bucky with yet another moral issue he’d have to google.

 

-

 

Bucky continued to go to work and pretend that Rumlow and most of his coworkers didn’t make his skin crawl.

 

It took about a month but they had made progress, figuring out that the lab that know Hydra associates were going into was 12-B. There was no plausible way for them to get into the lab without blowing his cover and no solid proof that A.I.M. was collaborating with Hydra. The Hydra members could be arrested but they were waiting for proof so they could take down A.I.M. and any sign of S.H.I.E.L.D. and A.I.M. would just burn everything and claim that they hadn’t known.

 

It had also been a month of getting to know Steven. The man was in turns prickly, passionate, angry, kind, judgemental, and intelligent. He was unwillingly liking Bucky as Roitner, relaxing into their evenings together and then suddenly prickling and puffing up like an anxious cat when he obviously remembered that he was supposed to only be pretending to like Bucky. 

 

Bucky liked him. 

 

A lot.

 

Steven was not only attractive, but he was witty and funny and cared about things that Bucky thought were important. He was genuine in a way that few people were, for all his attempts at pretending, the man could only be himself. 

 

It was how Bucky had always wanted to be. He had always wished he were a man of stronger integrity, one who did more, lied less. He wished he had kissed Arnie when he’d seen his friend staring at his lips, he wished that that he hadn’t played his life so safely the first time around. Yes he’d tried to be strong and brave and to take care of his sisters and his ma but what had that got him? He’d died young and alone anyways, left his sisters to fend for themselves and he was too cowardly to even look up what happened to them.

 

If he could go back he really didn’t know if he would change anything but he wondered how his life would have turned out if he had lived as unapologetically as Steven did. 

 

The more he saw Steven, the more he felt bad about lying to him. Yes, Steven was the one who was initiating the lying but the more Bucky got to know him, the more he could see how it was weighing on him.

 

It made him want to do something very stupid.

 

Natalia was not there to tell him no, so he was probably going to do something stupid.

 

It finally happened about a month and half into the new job. 

 

Steven had started to be especially clingy and Bucky wanted to tell him that when you’re infiltrating and you push too fast with a mark you risk spooking them and ruining the op. But Bucky liked the attention and the time with Steven. It was time to end it though. Hopefully Steven would like Bucky enough that when the op was over he might still be willing to see him.

 

Steven was over for dinner, for the third time that week. Steven was drinking the gluten free beer and making disparaging remarks at the television while Bucky cooked dinner.

 

He was trying to make a plantain has and had thrown in a bit of every vegetable he had in the house along with some spicy chicken that he had marinaded overnight in some sweet chili plum sauce that he had made.

 

He didn’t know if the meal was going to taste good, and he was frowning at the plantain and veggies in the large sauce pan. He probably should have googled what paired well with plantains before starting the meal but he was where he was and it was too late to turn back.

 

He didn’t notice Steven go quiet until he heard the jingle of his work keys. He’d left them out on purpose, half hidden by some mail, to force the confrontation.

 

With a sigh, he turned the stove down to low and went into the living room in time to see Steven pull an electronic card copier out of his backpack.

 

“Hey  _ Grant _ , buddy, whatcha doing?”

 

The face that Steven made was the face of a cat being stepped on: alarmed, pathetic, and a bit funny in a mean spirited sort of way.

 

“Nate,” Steven started slowly, “it’s not what it looks like.”

 

“Okay, then explain to me what exactly this is, because it  _ looks _ like you've been seeing me for access to my security clearance and are now stealing my credentials so you can get into the building where I work.”

 

“Oh well then it’s exactly what it looks like.” Steven said sarcastically and then immediately looked like he regretted it.

 

Bucky raised his eyebrows. 

 

“Listen Nate, the people you work for, they're not good people. They're doing bad things to the environment and I think they're doing something illegal.” Steven had his crusader face on, the one that said he was gonna die on this here hill and there was nothing you could do about it.

 

Bucky felt the unhelpful urge to laugh. Because he knows that Steven means this, his plan with his friends was to expose A.I.M. and to take down a multi-billion dollar company with ties to multiple world governments all on their lonesome as if A.I.M. or Hydra or hell the United States Government would just  _ let _ them. In the moment, he looked so sincere and young and full of passion that it made Bucky feel as ancient and rusted as he really was.

 

“I know, Grant, I know exactly what Aim is.”

 

For a second Steven looked so hurt and betrayed, as if he had thought that Roitner was some innocent lamb who could work at a place like A.I.M. for longer than a day and not realize what kind of place it was. Or maybe that was how Steven had rationalized how much he liked Bucky as Roitner despite Roitner’s job.

 

“My name’s not Grant.” Steven muttered, looking away.

 

“Well my name’s not Nathan.” Bucky said before he can stop himself, like a fucking idiot.

 

It shouldn’t matter as much as it does that Steven knew that Bucky was not a bad person. He’d known the man for a month and half and it had been a month and half of watching Steven try and treat him like a mark. But the giant idiot had wormed his way into Bucky’s head and his giant idiot opinion mattered. 

 

It mattered enough that Bucky had to do something about it.

 

Even if it was going to get Bucky killed, or at least ruin his op.

 

Steven opened his mouth to say something but Bucky silenced him with a look.

 

“I need to you to trust me when I say Aim is being handled and it’s very important to me that you and your friends, yes I know about your friends, do you not interfere. Promise me Steven.”

 

“It’s Steve and how do you know my name?”

 

“Promise me Steve.”

 

“It’s not right what they’re doing! People are dying, Nate--or whoever you are, I think they’ve killed someone I know, or taken him somewhere, just because he saw something. The police won’t believe me and no one will even consider anything beyond the fact that ‘homeless people just disappear sometime.’ I can’t leave this alone, I can’t walk away from this.”

 

“Jesus,” Bucky swore, “what do you mean that you think they’ve killed someone?”

 

Steve swallowed and hunched in on himself a bit.

 

“I work at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn near my school. There was a guy, I’d gotten to know him pretty well, he would stay with us every once and awhile, always would do the repairs that we couldn’t afford to get done professionally. Really good at that sort of stuff. Anyways he came in real freaked out because some people from Aim had seen him a few months ago and saying that they were really bad and they were going to find get him. He gave me a flashdrive and then left and I haven’t seen him since. When I tried to use the flash drive I found it was encrypted and then the fucking Homeland Security showed up and took it from me. Questioned me about where I’d gotten it and stuff. I felt watched for weeks afterwards but they must have believed me. That’s why I started looking into Aim in the first place.”

 

Bucky believed Steve but also if it really had been Homeland Security that had shown up at Steve’s place then he would also have been on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar when they had run Sam’s group of friends and acquaintances. 

 

“What was the man’s name?”

 

“Why should I trust you with that, you’ve admitted you’re not who you say you are and that your infiltrating Aim but you have said who you work for or why? You could be just as bad as they are.”

 

“I can’t tell you, I shouldn’t have told you what I did Steve. Just realize that you’re incredibly lucky that I’m the person you followed and tried to steal from. Most of Aim’s recruits would not have let you walk away from this.”

 

“Is that a threat?” Steve asked, his shoulders raising, his fist clenching like he was going to fight Bucky.

 

Bucky sighed.

 

“It was a warning, I’m begging you Steve, walk away from this. There are qualified people who are on it and who will take care of it.”

 

“I don’t know if I can do that Nate, not when people I know could be getting hurt.”

 

“Tell me the man’s name, I promise I will look into it. You have no reason to believe it but I hope you do when I say you can trust me.”

 

“He called himself Bobby Joe Fixit, or Mr. Fixit.”

 

“I will try to find out what’s happened to him. I promise.”

 

“Thanks, I should go.”

 

“You don’t have to, you can stay for dinner still,” Bucky offered.

 

“I should go.”

 

“Please Steve, please stay out of this.”

 

“I promise I be careful.” 

 

Bucky knew it was a lie, but he let it go. Resolving to wrap this up and get A.I.M. before Steve could do anything really stupid.

 

After he let Steve out, he took his work stuff and the card copier which he hadn’t given back to Steve and locked them in his safe before returning to the kitchen.

 

He wanted to go frown over his plantains some more.

 

The plantain hash tasted strange but was edible and the chili plum chicken was very tasty, but Bucky hardly tasted it. He was worried that he had made the wrong move.

 

By forcing a confrontation with Steve, had he made the man feel like he needed to step up his timeline. Would he try something directly against A.I.M. soon? Would the stupid kid get himself killed trying to fight giants.

 

After he ate he sent Bobby Joe Fixit to Skye as an alias of a missing person with possible ties to Aim. Then he tried to strategize.

 

-

 

What he needed was an excuse to go into 12-B. He was working the graveyard shift all week, covering for a colleague. He informed his team that he was going to make his move at the end of the week and had gathered all needed supplies, loop for the camera and key card scrambler for the door. He’d had Brock’s biometric information for weeks, people underestimated how easy it was to collect because movies made the process seem so complex but you just needed a high enough resolution picture of someone’s eyes and hands, and a recording of their voice and you had all the typical security measures needed. 

 

For when he was inside he had a nifty little thing that looked like a portable cell phone charger that hacked anything with data within ten feet. It had no finesse so there was no hiding what it was doing when it was turned on. Once he did he’d stay in the room for as long as he could gathering data and then have to leave because he’d be burned, but hopefully he’d gathered the evidence they needed.

 

Of course it all went to shit because of that idiot blond that Bucky was so taken with. 

 

It happened on Tuesday night, there came over the radio that there had been a security breach. The lower level security had caught the intruder and then had called in Rumlow, per protocol. Rumlow had the intruder brought to lab 12-B and then had called Bucky, telling him it was time he really proved himself.

 

Bucky tried not to look sick, because he knew what those words meant, he was going to be asked to torture someone to prove his loyalty to A.I.M..

 

12-B did not immediately reveal why it was of interest to Hydra, like all three labs on the 12th floor it was a suite, the room beyond the door held what looked like cells. Which were all empty but one which held Steve, Sharon, and Sam. All three looked pretty worked over. 

 

Bucky bit back his first instinct to break Rumlow’s neck. He kept his face impassive and switched on the device in his pocket, willing to let this play out until it looked like someone would get hurt, trying to get as much data as he could.

 

“What is this?” Bucky asked as he followed Rumlow to stand in front of Steve and his friends.

 

“This is where we shape the future, we’ve just had three new volunteers and I think it’s time you proved yourself.” Rumlow gestured to the three tied up in the cell.

 

Bucky stopped where the device would reach the server bank that was along the wall. 

 

“Have you called the police yet?” Bucky asked, trying to delay.

 

Rumlow looked at him disdainfully.

 

“We aren’t calling the police.”

 

“I’m not killing anyone who’s tied up,” Bucky declared, being willfully obtuse, “especially not with the cameras on in here.”

 

Sharon and Sam but looked ashen, but Steve looked incandescent, glaring at Bucky like he’d been betrayed. He was keeping his mouth shut for now, his jaw clenched tight enough that the muscles in his neck strained. Bucky willed the idiot to keep being quiet, at least until he killed Rumlow, because he was definitely going to kill Rumlow. 

 

Bucky had heard the kind of shape the future talk before.

 

“Don’t play dumb with me  _ Roitner _ , I know who and what you are. You may have fooled those idiots at Shield into thinking you’re a real boy but I’ve seen you stripped down to nothing, I know what you are Soldat.”

 

Bucky froze, he’d killed everyone, every face he could remember who was not already dead. He and Natalia had methodically wiped every record of himself out of Hydra. He did not remember Rumlow’s face.

 

“I only saw you once,” Rumlow said, “but I worked closely with Pierce, you remember him? He told me you, the Fist of Hydra.”

 

Bucky reminded himself to breathe, to let nothing show on his face.

 

“I know Shield found you,” Rumlow continued, ”and that bitch Romanoff has been using you as her personal hunting dog but I think it’s time for you to come back into the cold, there is more than one branch of Hydra.”

 

“I disagree,” Bucky said  and pulled his weapon and shot Rumlow between his eyes. 

 

He had wanted to buy time, but he was never going to give anyone the chance to drag him back to Hydra.

 

Steve, Sharon, and Sam were staring at Bucky in confused horror. Aside from Sam’s combat experience, however extensive that was, he was sure none of them had ever seen someone shot in front of them. But he didn’t have time to worry about that.

 

He quickly placed the hacking device on top of the servers to let it work while he cased the lab. 

 

He pulled out his phone and called Skye.

 

“I’m in 12-B, I don’t have time to explain but it’s going down tonight. I just shot Rumlow. Get an extraction for me and at least three other friendlies. I’m going to get as much as I can and then get us out of the building.” 

 

She confirmed and then Bucky hung up and crossed the room to the door to the rest of the laboratory suite. It had an electronic lock but he attached the keycard scrambler and let it do it’s work.

 

“Hey Nate what the fuck!” Steve shouted at him when he came back over to free them.

 

“Listen,” Bucky said, while untying Sharon, “the short of it is I’m with S.H.I.E.L.D. and once I get what I need from here we’re getting out, and then you can hear the long version and then explain to me what the fuck  _ you  _ were thinking.” 

 

They all sputtered a bit but Bucky didn’t let them get a word in.

 

“I told you,  _ I told you _ that Aim is dangerous, if I hadn’t been working tonight, or if I had just been one of their average guards you’d never be seen again. I told you that we had it covered and that you shouldn’t do anything stupid. Jesus Christ.” 

 

The scrambler beeped and Bucky left Sharon to untie Sam and Steve.

 

He raised his gun and opened the door. In the interior room there were two containment cells, the type that were for enhanced individuals. In one lay a small naked man, and in the other an equally naked short burly hairy man. They both snapped up when he entered the room. 

 

Bucky texted Skye  _ 2 more, 6 total friendlies including me _

 

“If I find a way to get you guys out, you gonna attack me?” 

 

The hairy man sneered but both of them said no. Bucky poked at the screens on the doors before attaching the scrambler to the first one. He cased the place, took a sample storage case and began gathering random samples that were in the lab. 

 

“Mr. Fixit!” Steve cried, when he entered the room.

 

“Steve?” The man Steve called Bobby Joe Fixit, stared at Steve in confusion, “What are you doing here?”

 

“I came to rescue my friend, I couldn’t let them get away with it.”

 

“Jesus christ.” Fixit said.

 

“Thank you,” Bucky agreed, with a glare at Steve.

 

The scrambler beeped and Bucky went back over and opened the door and then started on the other man’s door. 

 

Then he stopped and stared a second before continuing with his work, there’d be time in the future to know how Jim Howlett, another 107th soldier, had ended up seventy years in the future.

 

“If you’re taking input I think you should destroy those instead of passing them along for whoever you’re gathering them for.” Fixit said.

 

“How’s this for fucking input, you if you think you’re walking out the door to give my genetic material to whatever alphabet agency you work for I’m gonna let you get real acquainted with your lower intestines.” Howlett growled from his cell.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. would insist that this was important evidence, but Bucky trusted S.H.I.E.L.D. about as far as he could throw the Triskelion. As an agency it was alarming comfortable with civil rights violations and geneva conventions violations and he only continued to work with them because they protected him from imprisonment and experimentation. 

 

“Okay, sure let’s destroy them.” He said with a shrug.

 

They began emptying the vials into the sink until there was none left and then Fixit used the fire extinguisher foam to contaminate them completely.

 

Once everyone was free and then physical evidence was destroyed, Fixit and Howlett were wearing disposable clean room scrubs, they made a plan to exit the building with Bucky leading and Howlett and Sam with Rumlow’s gun bringing up the rear. Steve clearly resented being put in the middle but went along with the plan after being reminded that he had no combat training and would not be useful in the front.

 

It was extremely anti-climatic. Bucky bypassed the guard stations until the ground floor and then those guards were easily overpowered and knocked out before they could raise the alarm. The camera’s weren’t an issue since Skye had used her worm to loop the camera feeds. 

 

Natalia was waiting in an SUV in front of the building and sped off as soon as everyone crawled inside. 

 

-

 

There was a debrief where he explained his actions and his relationship with Steve to judgemental stares and learned that Fixit was Dr. Bruce Banner and also a potential green rage monster, and learned nothing about Jim Howlett who was going by John Logan and was apparently something called a mutant. It was revealed that A.I.M. and Hydra were collaborating on finishing the serum that a former Hydra prisoner named Erksine had given to Johan Schmidt and the modified version that Bucky had received from Zola. 

 

Halfway through the debrief Ex-Director Carter showed up and it turned out that the reason Sharon’s file was strange was because that’s what happens when you’re the adopted daughter of the founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.. For a ninety something year old woman she looked only about seventy which reminded Bucky of the file he read on the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D. where it said she’d worked closely with Erksine herself.

 

She actually shook Bucky and Natalia’s hand, which was an awe-inspiring experience, and made Natalia blush. 

 

After all of that, it was seven in the morning and everyone was released and Bucky was sort of standing near Steve, trying to work up the nerve to give him his real phone number and address.

 

“So how did the plantains taste?” Steve asked, not really looking at Bucky.

 

“Weird, I know now not every vegetable is a flavor match with something like plantains.” 

 

“Oh sure. So James---”

 

“---Bucky---”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Call me Bucky.” 

 

“Oookay  _ Bucky _ , you wanna make me some food sometime now that we’re not lying to each other.”

 

“I’d like that Steve. I actually found this recipe for pizza that uses cream cheese as the crust so you can eat it.”

 

Steve smiled fondly at him ask he talked about food. Something warm was bubbling in Bucky’s stomach. Maybe this was what he’d been missing. Someone to cook for.


End file.
